There are some albums when, having listened to them countless times, the listener still has no idea what the damn thing's about. Darren Hanlon’s new album is different. As with most of his work, the meanings of his songs aren't hidden in excessive metaphor or unnecessary phrases – it's to the point, it's honest, and it's painfully relatable.

Darren Hanlon is moving on. From someone, from somewhere. I Will Love You At All, like most his back catalogue, deals with the subtleties that make up the whole; the sort of simple yet usually unnoticed observations that causes one to snap their fingers and exclaim, “Yes! I've been there too!” Musically it's nothing special, and lacks the beauty and personality of previous studio album Fingertips and Mountaintops (one of this decade's finest albums in my opinion), but lyrically, it’s as wonderful as ever. This doesn't need to be an opus - his words provide the skeleton from which the simple guitar, piano, ukulele lines may delicately hang. Hanlon has finally (almost) got rid of the “see-what-I-did-there?” jokes of his previous works, and now seems to be comfortable with his best asset: his ability to tell the truth.

Among the verses of 'Scenes from a Separation', one can almost hear Hanlon's resigned chuckles, and see his heartbroken, stoic smiles: “A rainy afternoon in your bedroom/clothes in two piles on the floor/One is labelled 'haute couture'/The other's marked 'alms for the poor'/I'm just loitering, trying to look helpful/You offer two corners of the sheet/We fold over and over and over again/And then in the middle, we'll meet”. It's the final line, however, that says it best: “I know that you're worth mourning for.”

In the album's centrepiece, 'House', he returns to “the place that we rented when you were still mine”. The “will I, won't I” shuffle Hanlon – or perhaps a mere protagonist, though I doubt it – plays in deciding whether to knock on the door of his previous home is brilliant. It's something I recently considered doing myself while driving through Queensland for the Splendour In The Grass Festival. I wanted to return to the home I lived in as child and ask if I could get a cutting of the tree my father planted for me, “Frangipani Annie”. I couldn't do it. As Hanlon observes at the end of 'House', memories are “best if they're left in a place you can't find them/Or else you might find someone's changed the decor”. The walls of the place he'd previously called home had been painted green. Frangipani Annie, too, may long be dead.

And it's this that makes Hanlon's work so special – he writes of situations that are not his own, but everyone's. We've all been through a break-up, we've all moved away, we've all yearned for stability, for happiness, for simplicity and wonder in someone else's arms. We've all been hurt, and we've all hurt someone else. We've all desperately wanted the past back so that we may change the future. There is something in here for everyone, and there always will be. He may be distinctly inner-west, he may be distinctly Gympie, he may be distinctly Australian, but what makes Darren Hanlon such an amazing songwriter is that his songs are so distinctly universal.

by A.H. Cayley